OT: CD drive died! Help please!

Renegade 13 · #1 May 25th, 2005, 11:50 AM

OK, I was hoping someone here could help me with a nagging problem I have. Last night, my CD-RW drive just decided to die on me it seems...however there is no obvious reason for it to have done so, and it was working just a couple hours previously. Here's what I did in the time between when I know the drive was working and when it wasn't:

-Removed the CD from the drive, which WAS working (Warcraft 3)
-Began downloading a patch from Blizzard for the Warcraft 3 expansion, the Frozen Throne. Patch version was 1.14.
-Left for a while, my dad was playing a couple simple card games (no possible effect there), and my sister was typing an assignment for university (again, something that's been done dozens of times.)
-Returned, installed the patch.
-Placed Warcraft 3 expansion CD in the drive, nothing happens.

Now, the symptoms go like this:

The drive will open and close just fine, so its power supply is fine. CD enters the drive, the busy light on the drive flashes slowly for a few seconds, then proceeds to flash very rapidly until the CD is eventually removed. However, the CD will not spin up to speed at all, and when I try to do anything requiring a CD, the computer tells me I need to put the CD in the drive.

I've tried several CD's, all of which are working and all of which received the same error.

The CD drive is a Sony CD-RW CRX215E5

I will try updating the drivers for it after I return from school. Any help anyone could supply would be immensely appreciated!

Spoo · #2 May 25th, 2005, 01:00 PM

Have you restarted the computer since the symptoms began?

Captain Kwok · #3 May 25th, 2005, 01:16 PM

It sounds like a physical problem with the drive. You could try using a cleaning kit to see if it's just a dirt sort of problem...

Thermodyne · #4 May 25th, 2005, 03:01 PM

Can You hear thr drive head seeking? Sounds like a faint zipp-zipp-zipp.

Not much you can do other than uninstall it and reinstall from scratch. Most of the base micro code is flashed into the drive itself. Sudden death syndrome is a problem with cdrw drives.

If you play games that read from the CD for hours on end, then you should use a pure reader (cd drive) and save the burner for writing cd's. Readers are cheap <$15 bucks. So you can afford to have one die now and again.

boran_blok · #5 May 25th, 2005, 03:21 PM

Imho if you dont hear spinning up the motor either died or is jammed.

ToddT · #6 May 25th, 2005, 07:03 PM

I would agree verify if Drv is spinnig up i've had a cd player die simply besause motor ceased operating, and cdrom that died the same way. its most like the speed controller for the motort that went capute. Th cdrom genrated no error messages when motor died, problem only should up when i tried access a cd. it would spit disc out after a short period.

Renegade 13 · #7 May 27th, 2005, 03:29 AM

I'll have to start passing out a vaccine...before the plague overwhelms the entire worlds, and CD drives start crapping out randomly!

Captain Kwok · #8 May 27th, 2005, 01:24 PM

My wife's Laptop CD-RW/DVD went crazy a couple of weeks ago and will only read audio CD's and nothing else!!!

geoschmo · #9 May 27th, 2005, 01:50 PM

I had to replace the CD drive on my laptop a few months ago. It was a little scarey at first, but it turned out to be not too bad at all. Of course, your laptop will be different. The hardest part was finding a diagram that showed where all the relevant screws were. Laptops aren't as standard as desktops. If you've been inside one desktop you can find your way around pretty much any of them. My laptop wasn't any more difficult then a desktop, but it wasn't something that could be easily figured out without a diagram.

Renegade 13 · #10 May 26th, 2005, 11:44 AM

I cracked open the old drive, messed around a little bit, but I couldn't seem to find any obvious issues, and nothing I did helped it out.

I also downloaded a small program from the manufacturers website, it checked both read and write capability. Neither were functioning, and I don't have the expertise to mount a serious effort to repair, so I think buying a new drive will be the most efficient thing to do.

Thanks everyone for your input so far!